EUTOPIA workshop Rethinking Area Studies for a Changing World
Event date: to
Event location: Rektorat UL Kongresni trg 12, Ljubljana
The aim of the workshop is to fundamentally modernize regional studies through a critical reexamination of their Cold War-era and Eurocentric foundations. Through the interdisciplinary integration of Sinology, anthropology, and other disciplines, the event promotes the decolonization of knowledge and the development of new analytical models for understanding a multipolar world. The goal is to establish an ethical, transcultural approach to research that will directly influence the development of contemporary university curricula. The workshop will be conducted in English.
The event is interdisciplinary and brings together nine speakers and nine students from diverse academic fields such as Persian studies, Anthropology, Sinology, and Japanology. Participants will examine the premises of traditional area studies and discuss past shortcomings as well as future development opportunities for the field. The central question addressed by the workshop is how regional and intercultural research can move beyond the frameworks of Cold War legacies, Eurocentric conditioning, and methodological fragmentation that characterize them.
By combining diverse academic perspectives, the workshop will seek to contribute to the renewal of area studies as a globally significant field grounded in interdisciplinarity and epistemic reflexivity. The programme of the workshop can be found on the following link.
The event is organized in collaboration between three universities within the EUTOPIA network: The University of Ljubljana, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, and the University of Gothenburg. As the host institution, the University of Ljubljana joins the two partner institutions, which are particularly significant in this field due to their specialized departments for regional studies.
The event is a part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Department of Asian Studies. The organizer gratefully acknowledges the support from the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS) in the framework of the Research Program Asian Languages and Cultures (P6-0243).
